


paper planes

by ameliafuckingshepherd



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers Family, Backstory, Character Study, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, POV Natasha Romanov, kind of a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:08:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliafuckingshepherd/pseuds/ameliafuckingshepherd
Summary: Natasha’s life through colors.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 20





	paper planes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HopePotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopePotter/gifts).



> Hello, and thanks for stopping by! I have been working on this for a long time, and even though it’s not 100% how I’d like it to be, I think it’s time to share it. So please forgive any mistakes or repeat lines. My desperation for attention and praise from people on this website has overridden my willingness to give fucks about editing.

Natasha doesn’t remember her parents. She rememberers a vague sense of warmth, of comfort. A light she can see but can’t quite reach. The KGB stole her, SHIELD said when she arrived in the US. But it was hard to see the red room as the villain when it was the only home she knew. 

In her adolescence, she only knew red. Red clothes. Red walls. Red, covering her hands, spilling in buckets out of her first mark. Red was comfort. Red took on a different meaning as she reached her teenage years.

Red was anger. Red was fury. Red was blinding, smothering rage, emotions coming in such strong waves she was nearly knocked down. Red was not the color of hearts hung in the windows of shops in February, because red did not mean love. Red meant violence and hate. 

Sometimes, she thinks, she was raised by red. It broke into her consciousness and seeped through the cracks, filling the place a mother should. 

At twenty five, a year after she defected, she went home. It was never really home, but a way station on the road to better things. That’s what she likes to think.

The truth is much harder to face. The truth; no matter what direction she turns, there is only _down_. Only _worse._ and almost more painful to acknowledge, that she has never had a home and never will, because people like her don’t fit into this world. 

The red room looks much the same, but inhabited by dust instead of children. It has been seven years. Both too long, and not long enough. 

She lets herself in through the main entrance, tugs the oak doors open with all her strength, and the sunlight streams into the dark hall. She brushes her hand against the carvings on the wood. Quiet has done this place well. 

Up the stairs, trailing a gasoline canister behind her. 

To the dormitories, to her old bunk. To the nameplate that still hangs crooked, _Natalia Alinova Romanov._ As if really, no time has passed.

It looks the same, but it does not feel the same. She supposes it shouldn’t.

The gasoline splashes on the floor, against the time windows, soaking the mattresses and carpets. She wants it all gone. She wants to throw her entire life in this soon blazing inferno and let herself be burnt to the bone, then to build back up into the Natasha she has made in America. It has been seven years, and she is growing tired from the weight of who she used to be. 

Who she _is_ , because people don’t change. They learn, they grow, but change is a hollow idea. 

Later, she stands away, watching the building aglow from within. Orange flames climb the brick walls, licking and searching for something to consume. Natasha has always liked fire. 

Burning, raging, unstoppable until everything in its path has been obliterated. 

Orange, hissing and snapping the bones of this house which was never a home. 

Then black, as smoke spills out of the windows and into the sky, and Natasha turns away. 

It has been seven years.

Some things are better in orange. 

Most things are better in ash.

Clint’s sunflower fields brought a new meaning to yellow. Before, yellow belonged to school busses and number two pencils, to cute cars, to rain boots and matching jackets. Token symbols of cheer and innocence. Cliche, she thinks, that both those things are foreign concepts to Natasha. Yellow belonged to the sun she was told not to dwell on. Yellow was not permitted in the red room.

She resented the color yellow.

Clint brought her to the farm three months after the invasion of New York. It was before his children, when it was just him and Laura and a golden retriever named Hero, and fields upon fields of sunflowers. Every day, Natasha sat in the fields and studied the flowers. She watched birds cling to them, pecking out the seeds, and squirrels climb the long stalks. She took note of how they turned to the sun, their petals reaching for something _bigger_. 

Sunflowers have more sense than most humans, she decided, and she liked sunflowers. If you just keep reaching up you might bloom, and that’s a beautiful sentiment. 

Yellow belongs to flowers, now. And the bees that drink from Laura’s window boxes. Yellow means peace. Understanding. Yellow means _family_. 

Yellow means that no matter how bad everything seems, no matter how many unimaginable horrors weigh on her shoulders, there will always be sunflowers reaching for the firmaments, and for whatever lies beyond. 

Green with envy was an expression Natasha didn’t understand until she joined Shield. 

She didn’t envy her coworkers in the expected way. She was better at her job in almost every aspect. She was prettier, smarter, and more dangerous. She didn’t envy her friends. She knew better than that. Natasha didn’t have reason to envy them. 

Her envy lays with the word _home_.

The connotation of _home_ being _wanted_. Natasha has never been wanted. 

She is envious of those who have a home in any manner. A home with a friend or a spouse, a home with a family, a home where you don’t have to be on guard. 

Green with envy, a metaphor used for thousands of years to describe a jealousy so strong, the skin loses color. 

She cannot think of an envy stronger than that of an orphan (for all intensive purposes) stuck on the outside, sequestered to the sitting room but never invited to stay for dinner. 

Envy is poisonous. Envy is something she understands now. Envy isn’t always about who’s the prettiest or who won the talent show. Envy is mined from deeper in the soul. It is what takes the place of what you are fundamentally missing and longing. 

Natasha wished she never had cause to learn the meaning of those words. 

At sixteen, she had only seen the ocean twice. She pondered this as she stretched out on the white sand of a beach in Greece, enjoying her last few hours before transport home. She had acquired a tan a few shades darker than her usual pale skin, and she wondered if she would have to buy new foundation for the summer. 

The waves crept up the beach and she rose, walking forward tentatively until the water stretched to touch her toes. It was warm, and a shade of blue she had never seen before, bright and vibrant. She glanced over her shoulder as if her instructors would be there to chastise her for enjoying herself and putting her identity at risk, but of course, they weren’t. She was alone, just her and the ocean and the salt-smelling breeze.

The water is warm on her feet, inviting. She wades in deeper. Gulls cry above her, and small fish tickle her feet. The sun is hot on her shoulders. Burning, but she doesn’t mind. She’s never felt so much _peace_. 

She dreams of a life like this. 

Of a childhood like this. 

Of her parents, and family vacations, playing in the sand. Her father would teach her how to surf while her mother read magazines on her beach towel.

Natasha takes a deep breath and dives beneath the waves. 

She swims until her eyes sting, and everything under the surface seems dark. 

The extraction team found her asleep on the shore. 

When she arrived at the red room, the instructors beat her until she couldn’t see anything but red. Until every breath hurt. Until she thought that this time, she might really die. 

She learned that day, that beautiful things are meant to be kept at a distance. They are dangerous. 

That enchanting blue no longer meant freedom. It was a reminder that Natasha could never be a part of the world she was born to. The cruel assurance that no matter where she ran to, she would always be in chains. 

So she never went back to the ocean. That blue stayed hidden in her heart with the other forbidden thoughts she had collected.

Blue, the barrier between her and everything she longed to have.

To most, a bruise means pain. Damage. A fight. 

A purple patch of broken blood vessels, caused by trauma. The purple fades to blue, which fades to yellow, which disappears . 

Many people would hide their bruises. 

Natasha doesn’t mind them. 

To her, that purple is a badge of honor, and a reminder to keep going, at whatever cost. That purple means when she gets knocked down, she stands back up. It means she has lived through another day of fight, and she is still here. That purple, which fades to blue, which fades to yellow, which fades back to skin. 

That purple means strength. 

It means, no matter what happens, she will always get up.

Tomorrow, the bruise will be lighter. 

At the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> For my best friend and biggest supporter, [HopePotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopePotter/pseuds/HopePotter)
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed our time together. I love you all.  
> xo


End file.
